


though the seas threaten

by evocates



Series: tempestuous [4]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: BDSM Scene, Complicated People, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Healing, Recovery, trauma aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 13:56:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9551900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: The ink on the contract had barely dried and Jefferson was lingering at the door. Angelica had taken her to a corner. Her calluses rasping over Sally’s cheek, she had murmured, “You deserve a reward,” with soft heat coiled tight around her tongue and breath ghosting over Sally’s ear.“No,” Sally had told her then. Her fingertips had trembled over Angelica’s lips, her heart wrenching at the sight of that pride and desire wrapped up in night-dark eyes, turned towards her. “Not yet.”Sharp stones on the path of healing. Coda toa fever of the mad.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niney/gifts).



> For the fightback fic auction, Niney asked for Sally/Angelica feel-good fluff within _fever_ ‘verse. Kind of a tall order. I did my absolute best, but there’s still darkness here because _this_ _is fever._
> 
> Again, this fic makes no sense without knowledge of _a fever of the mad_. Please read through that monster first.
> 
> **Warnings:** Depiction of complicated trauma aftermath in which healing doesn’t follow the more common narratives, brief mention of the complexities of morality between a consenting under-aged girl and her much older lover, and sex and BDSM between two women. (Yes, this is the gentlest of all three codas so far.)

_Though the seas threaten, they are merciful;_  
_I have cursed them without cause._  
     _The Tempest,_ Act V Scene I

_December 2, Friday_

The ink on the contract had barely dried and Jefferson was lingering at the door. Angelica had taken her to a corner. Her calluses rasping over Sally’s cheek, she had murmured, “You deserve a reward,”with soft heat coiled tight around her tongue and breath ghosting over Sally’s ear.

“No,” Sally had told her then. Her fingertips had trembled over Angelica’s lips, her heart wrenching at the sight of that pride and desire wrapped up in night-dark eyes, turned towards her. “Not yet.”

“I can wait,” Angelica had promised, then, and stepped away.

That had been five months ago, back in July with the sun shining bright and hot above, turning the needle of the Empire State into bursts of glimmering light. Now, in winter, the chill bit into Sally’s fingers as she tugged her gloves off.

Columbia had gone green a couple of years before she had enrolled, refusing to issue paper transcripts, instead emailing them to their students via their university inboxes. But Sally had printed hers out anyway, and found an envelope large enough to contain it. She trailed her fingertips down the row of letters, stating her results.

Tiny mountains with a stroke in the middle, for all five courses she took in the semester. For the last, it had been the same. The numbers _4.0_ stood stark and dark, a declaration made real by ink and white paper. A few cents for her throat to release its grip on her heart, to let it settle back down to its rightful place in her chest.

A part of her still chided that the money could have been better spent. It sounded like the girl she had used to be, the girl trapped on her knees and her back to earn money that she tucked away in a drawer, never to be used, while her head spun and her shoulders ached from counting her daily expenses. 

She would like to say that she wasn’t that girl any longer, but that would be a lie.

A familiar scarlet Audi drew up towards the steps outside the library of Columbia’s Medicine faculty. Sally tucked the paper back inside its envelope. She opened her door and ducked inside the car, shedding her coat – a neon-coloured, down-filled thing, bought in July to replace the fur she had before – before strapping herself in as heated air blasted towards her neck and legs.

Long fingers wrapped over hers, teasing them open. The envelope fell to the floor of the car. Angelica rubbed her thumbs over Sally’s palm, following the deep creases, and said, “You’re cold.”

“It _is_ winter,” Sally said, and tried to smile. When Angelica shook her head, she turned away.

Easier, she thought, if she imagined herself filthy and Angelica clean; easier so she could cut the ties between them and walk away. But Sally knew that under Angelica’s manicured, French-painted nails was dirt as filthy as that which encrusted Sally’s skin. 

The soil was different – smoother, lighter – but the murkiness of it was the same. Angelica was selfish; she had Sally on her knees before Sally was even of age to lay on a bed and spread her legs. She had taken what she wanted, accepting only Sally’s word and ignoring the law, and now she wore the badge of the officer who protected the laws; who was supposed to be the very epitome of it.

They were bound so tightly since then, threads having sunk deep into both of their chests, twining around their hearts, that Sally turning her back would have left both of them hollow and empty. She knew that. She knew, too, that with Angelica, she didn’t feel dirty, but clean and fitting.

None of that made the gentleness easier to accept. None of that made her skin feel more deserving of the warmth Angelica provided just by continuing to breathe. Of Angelica’s fingers around her wrist, the touch coalescing the ground into solidity beneath Sally’s feet. 

“You shouldn’t have come to pick me up,” Sally murmured. The dashboard clock said that it was mid-afternoon.

“Things are already winding down,” Angelica replied. She didn’t take her hand off Sally even as the car peeled off the curb and swerved back into the main street. “Besides, taking a break once in a while will help kill my reputation of being a workaholic.”

“Isn’t being known as one a good thing?”

“Good when you’re an ADA, because then you can shine.” Shrugging, Angelica let go. The world swam in front of Sally’s eyes, but those fingers returned once Angelica was finished with changing gears. “But without the ‘assistant’ in front of my title…” She flashed Sally a smile. “It sets unnecessary pressure upon everyone else _and_ makes it look like I actually had to work to get where I am.”

Sally blinked. She cocked her head. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” she asked, genuinely confused. “The second part, I mean. It shows them that you take your work seriously.” 

“Those are two different things,” Angelica said, laughing under her breath. The car made a left turn as they passed into Manhattan proper from its northern tip. “Working hard, and pulling late hours, just make it seem like I’m struggling. If I’m struggling just like they are, then there’s no immediate reason for me to actually be the boss.”

The hand on the steering wheel drummed, arrhythmic and nonsensical. “There are quite a few who are still convinced that I got my position because of nepotism.”

She didn’t say his name, but she didn’t have to: Sally could already see Jefferson hovering at the edge of her vision, a ghost half-caught by the mirrored window on the passenger’s side.

But it was not the Jefferson who stood at the entrance hall of his house, arms crossed and eyes categorising the mistakes Sally had made. It was the Jefferson she saw the last time they met, during the signing of the contract; him in a pair of jeans barely held up by his belt, a jacket too wide for his shoulders, and all of his bright colours replaced by greys and blues. 

What did it say, what could it say, that the boogeyman who haunted Sally’s thoughts was no villain, but someone in whom she could see herself? She held onto Angelica’s touch, Angelica’s hand, the same way Jefferson held onto Madison’s clothes: knowing that there were spikes that pierced and hurt, and yet holding on because they had learned to love the pain.

She had no answer. She only knew that she still wished that she could hate him.

“I’m sorry,” Angelica said, breaking the heavy silence between them. She ducked her head down as the car came to a stop in front of a red light. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

_It._ Sweet Angelica, gathering more filth upon her hands for Sally’s sake. She smiled.

“If you don’t ever mention anything that might make me remember, then there will be nothing for you to say.” She lifted Angelica’s hand, brushing her lips across thin skin stretched over muscle and bone. “Don’t even think about quitting just for my sake either.”

Angelica laughed. She stepped on the gas as the light changed to green, her hand leaving Sally’s in favour of the gear shift. Once the car had settled into a steady rhythm of movement, the hand was back again, a thumb brushing over Sally’s palm. “You’re starting to read my mind.”

“Nah,” Sally said, grinning helplessly out of the corner of her mouth. “You’ve just been repeating the same things for too long.”

The Met loomed up in front of them as Angelica made another turn. For a brief moment, she could almost see through the buildings to the grounds of the museum; could see herself and Jimmy sitting there on the benches, Jimmy flicking ash at pigeons and laughing, Sally’s mouth sticky with lies. She let out a breath through her teeth, tipping her head back as she leaned hard against the passenger seat. 

There was a question hovering above Angelica’s mouth, shaped like the envelope that had been left to lie, lonely and pale, on the floor of the car. Sally bent to pick it up, running her thumb over the soft edges, bending them.

“I kept my GPA up.” The words fell from her mouth and floated, weightless, between them.

“Despite everything.” Angelica’s voice was soft. “Just like you did last semester.” But the pride in it was so strong that it gained a life of its own, thrumming deep and steady like the pulse beneath Sally’s fingertips.

“Yeah,” Sally said.

Silence fell upon them, bands twining around their throats, and held even as Angelica drove up into her driveway and they exited the car. The jangle of keys in Angelica’s hand strangled further. The envelope torn beneath Sally’s fingers as she stepped into the house.

But before she could remove her coat, Angelica’s arms wrapped around her from behind. She pressed a kiss to Sally’s curls, and rested her chin on top of her head. She still did not speak. The envelope fell to the ground.

Once, a classmate of hers told her of a custom that the Japanese named _kintsugi,_ whereby they repaired pottery by welding the broken pieces together with gold and silver. _What is broken is more beautiful_ , the classmate had said, eagerness in her bright, bright eyes. _Isn’t there something wonderful about that_?

There was no gold, no silver, to be found in Angelica’s hands. Her skin could only be wood or, better yet, clay. She could piece Sally together, filling up the missing pieces with bits of herself, but she could not provide the kiln. The heat had to come from within Sally herself, drying the new clay while carefully not shattering the old because she couldn’t rebuild herself.

“In July, you said—” Her voice died, half-born and strangled by the band around her throat.

But Angelica understood, somehow. Her smile was small and warm against Sally’s temple. Sally turned around and made to drop to her knees, but Angelica held her even tighter.

“Bedroom,” she murmured. Her fingers carded through Sally’s curls, gentle. “Bring your transcript with you.” Then she pulled away.

The house was made of stone – one of the relics of an older time, carefully preserved – and it held heat in without need for electricity. And Sally was wearing her coat, still. But chill seeped into her bones anyway.

She took a deep breath and picked up the envelope. She following Angelica into the bedroom, and stood in the doorway as the older woman rummaged through her drawers. When Angelica pulled out a very familiar leather-bound file, Sally’s breath caught in her throat.

“Here,” Angelica said, indicating to the spot just beside her large bed. “Come here.”

Sally went, an asteroid pulled towards the Earth. Angelica slipped the envelope out of her fingers, and placed it and the file on the ground, a foot apart. Her hand rested on Sally’s shoulder for a moment before she cupped her neck.

“Kneel for me.”

Her knees shook when they landed on the floor, left knee above the file, right above the envelope. Sally squeezed her eyes shut, trying to breathe.

The file was thicker than the paper. Both proofs of her accomplishments, but she still rocked from side to side. Quicksand in their very solidity. Angelica’s hand brushed her cheek. Her callused thumb stroked over the curve, over and over. Warmth that was hot enough to burn, to spark into flames that threatened to swallow her whole.

Realisation unfurled like a rose beneath her ribs.

“Do you see, now?”

She was a thief, taking comfort from Angelica’s steady breaths on her skin when she had solidity in her hands. She was selfish, taking what she didn’t need because what she had in her hands should be enough confirmation of what she had done. She was ridiculous, she didn’t make sense, because she had proof and she still could not believe.

Sally nodded, because she could not bring herself to speak.

“I give all of this freely,” Angelica said. Her hand rested above Sally’s throat, the weight anchoring her every breath.

Her path was jagged, paved with tremulous hands with rocks that cut her palms, glued onto dirt with her blood. Every step cut her feet. But Angelica would still walk beside her, and hold her steady even when she could find balance by herself.

There was no need for need.

The knowledge was true and solid but it left her swaying and aching. Like the floor beneath paper that was too thin. Sally clenched her hands into fists, and relaxed again. Holding too tight would not have things making sense again.

Angelica’s other hand cupped the back of her neck, her thumb stroking over the jut of the spine. Sally tipped her head back. She counted each touch, letting it dictate her breathing: every scrape of nail an inhale, every smooth slide an exhale.

“What do you need?”  
_  
Nothing,_ Sally knew she should say, even though it would be a lie. She shuddered again, turning her head and closing her teeth around the thin skin of Angelica’s wrist. She felt the pulse drum against her lips, and allowed the word to escape without sound.

“I don’t know,” she said eventually. “I just…” Her knees rocked her from side to side. “I’m unsteady and there’s no reason for me to be.”

“Mm,” Angelica nodded. She didn’t tell Sally that there was no need for reason, because Sally’s fingers have frozen into claws long ago in her grasping need for such things. She tugged on Sally’s hair instead, urging her to stand, then to lie down on the bed.

Tangling their fingers together, Angelica pinned them on both sides of her head. Sally finally opened her eyes, lips parting in a soft gasp when she saw liquid night staring back at her. Angelica smiled, the barest curve of the lips that glinted with teeth.

“Come on,” Angelica urged. “Take what you need.”

Slowly, cautiously, Sally wrapped her legs around Angelica’s small waist, hooking her ankles above her hips. She swallowed, fingers twitching in Angelica’s grip.

“Like this?” 

“I can’t tell you,” Angelica pressed a small, lingering kiss to her jaw. “But I know what I want to give.” She lowered herself, pressing her breasts against Sally’s, pushing her down into the sheets. Her hips rocked just once.

“Is it,” Sally paused, licking her lips, “Is it still a gift if you’re taking pleasure from it?” 

Laughing again, Angelica kissed her. Softer this time, and more thorough, her tongue licking into Sally’s mouth as if she was trying to map out its depths. Her hands left Sally’s, one arm sneaking underneath her waist to urge her to sit up.

Despite how slender she was, Angelica never failed to make Sally feel like she was tinier. 

“What do you think?”

Sally closed her eyes. She rested her cheek on Angelica’s shoulder, breathing in her scent, letting it fill her lungs and seep into her blood to mark her veins. She was not so hollow that she needed this. She was not so full within that she felt that she would burst without any outlet of some sort. She merely—

No, there was no ‘merely,’ was there? She wanted. That was enough. That was what should be needed.

“It’s still a gift,” she whispered, and felt more than heard Angelica’s approving, delighted hum.

The clothes slid off her, layer by layer, removed by Angelica’s reverent hands. Sally, having grown surrounded by her mother and brothers who loved her, always knew that she was loved. Sally, having grown under the averted eyes and thin lips of her father, always knew that she wasn’t worthy.

Equilibriums should be found in the middle. But Angelica poured adoration into her with every touch that crafted strangely soft steel around Sally’s body, and made her feel _precious_ instead.

“Hook your hands behind my neck,” Angelica instructed once their clothes were a messy pile on the floor. “Keep your feet flat on the sheets, and don’t move them.”

The sheets rustled as she moved. Sweat slicked her skin from wearing her coat too long indoors. Sally arched her hips, carefully not curling her toes or placing too much weight on her heels. Angelica smiled. “Good girl,” she said, her fingers skittering in the air above Sally’s curls.

Parting her lips, Sally waited. Angelica’s fingers reached her lips eventually, drawing the outline of them in the air before she pressed down. Tilting her head, Sally sucked her fingers in, sliding her tongue over the skin, tasting the sweat and something sweeter beneath, Angelica’s essence that both was and wasn’t purely imaginary.

“My girl,” Angelica breathed. Her thumb drew the curve of Sally’s lips in the air, fingers curving to scrape nails over Sally’s tongue. “My beautiful, sweet girl.”

Angelica had given her praises that were so full of meaning that they filled up Sally’s aching lungs with just their memory. But it was these words, and only these, which made her tremble now, squeezing her eyes shut as she tossed her head from side to side, sucking harder on the fingers.

The fingers slipped out of her mouth. Before Sally could protest, Angelica kissed it, breathing, “Mine, all mine,” down her throat before those finger slipped inside her, curling up immediately. Sally gasped, rocking upwards, barely managing to keep her feet flat on the bed. Angelica bit her lip, never seeming to need to look to know when Sally was in danger of disobeying and reminding her, before she started to move.

It should be an invasion; Sally was used to invasions. But with Angelica, it always felt like a joining instead, their bodies melding into each other’s for this endless moment. Her mind turned blank, filled only with the feel of Angelica’s body against hers, the thrusts inside her hole, the thumb rubbing insistent over her clit. Angelica’s mouth over hers, less a kiss than a demand for Sally to follow her breathing. 

Another hand, drier, wedged between their rocking bodies to splay upon her chest. Sally gasped as the twist of her nipple. She jerked her head away, teeth catching on Angelica’s lip in desperate attempt to keep obeying, to keep _behaving_. Angelica laughed, dark and thick and sweet, molasses made sound pouring down Sally’s throat. 

She came the first time when Angelica scraped her calluses over her clit and nipple at the same time she raked her nails gently over her walls. Her hands clenched on the sheets. Metal washed over her tongue as lips pressed against hers to inhale her cries. Sally swallowed by instinct.

The next orgasms washed over her endlessly. Angelica was the moon and currents and she was the waters, drawn up constantly into tides that crashed upon the shores. Sweet helplessness twining itself like vines around her body, leaving only her feet alone. She shook and shook and felt as if she was falling apart.

Even if she was, Angelica was here. Angelica’s body bracketed hers, letting her fall apart and catching all of the pieces before they could shatter.

Just as everything felt too overwhelming to bear, there was air instead of breath in her lungs. Sally heard herself stuttering, “Ma’am, ma’am, please, please, let me, please,” without even knowing what she wanted.

Angelica was there to know it for her. For now, she could know it for her, and Sally could place the whole of herself into those hands, cupping her face and streaking sour-salt over her cheeks. Sally sobbed under her breath, lips parted to take those fingers in again, tasting the wetness of herself on her tongue, mixing with Angelica’s blood.

“I’m here,” Angelica said. Air brushed over Sally’s body, raising goosebumps on her sweat-soaked skin. Sally whined, raising her hips, wanting touch, but Angelica shushed her gently. “A moment. Just a moment.”

Legs settled over her shoulders. Thumb brushing over her lids. Sally blinked her eyes open, and Angelica was smiling down at her. Her lips were swollen, a bead of blood wet and gleaming underneath the sunlight. As Sally watched, she licked it away. Her hand tangled into Sally’s hair, cupping the back of her head.

“Here,” Angelica said. The smell of her hit Sally’s nose, sharp and sweet at the same time. She darted out her tongue. 

The fingers in her hair tightened. Sticky, they tugged on the strands, making her arch her neck backwards. Angelica smirked down at her. She was dripping wet, beads caught within wiry hairs, and yet she would still seem composed if not for the rapid rise and fall of her chest. 

“You forgot something, my girl,” she said, sounding almost imperious.

Sally turned her head, sliding her teeth over one smooth, dark thigh. “Please, ma’am,” she pleaded. “Please, will you let me?”

“Good girl,” Angelica praised. Muscles jumped beneath Sally’s mouth as she lowered herself further.

Catching her tongue within Angelica’s folds, Sally slid it carefully around the curves. She flicked the tip at the clit, making Angelica moan, her fingers tightening in Sally’s hair. She carefully kept away from the slit, moving around it instead because she knew Angelica didn’t like penetration. 

Careful, precise, she moved in the ways Angelica liked, the ways Angelica had taught her so gently years ago. She closed her eyes. 

This was not service, Sally knew. This was not the returning of the debt of pleasure. She was the waves and Angelica was the moon, and the waters caressed the moon’s reflection as best as they could when the moon offered it to them. 

Perhaps she should call it worship. But Angelica’s body was so solid above her, her cries so resonating into the depths of Sally’s bones, that to call it such would be a strange sort of blasphemy. She had no words.

But she didn’t need any. Her mouth was busy. Her tongue was tiring, so words had to be shelved as she clasped her hands on Angelica’s hips, rocking up to her as she closed her lips around her clit, sucking hard.

Fingers tangled into hers, Angelica holding her hands tight to her own hips. Sally tipped her head up, mouth smeared, and Angelica panted as she looked at her. Her hair was dishevelled, and sweat soaked her skin. The drop of blood had smeared. Sally could feel her shaking. 

But she was still imperious, still regal, as she grinned and tossed her hair back. “Come now, my girl,” she said, thrusting her hips forward. “Show me.”

It was not a command. It was not a demand. It was a challenge.

“Yes’m,” she said, slurring deliberately. She licked her lips, and felt Angelica’s laughing in the tremors of her spine before she ducked her head down again.

It was not worship, Sally knew, but it felt like it: her world narrowing down to Angelica alone. The steadiness of repetitions and minute variations, so much like ritual. The sound of Angelica’s voice rising in pitch and coalescing into mist that greyed the sides of her eyes even when she closed them. The scent of her wrapping her into soft wool so the spikes of the world disappeared, and time itself no longer had any meaning.

Perhaps it was minutes later, or perhaps it was over an hour – it didn’t matter – when soft hair brushed across her thighs. Sally cried out, the sound ripped out of her throat, as fingers pressed inside her and _twisted_ hard, just once. Angelica’s voice reached its crescendo again, tremulous and loud.

Grey skies cleared, revealing the stars. Storm clouds descended to envelop her entirely. Sally had always been afraid of the dark, but this… this she sunk into with a whisper.

“Ma’am.”

Warmth surrounding her, then a piece of it left to be replaced by something heavier. Sally breathed, shifting, but there was weight on her eyelids, one after the other. Soft whispers, hoarse with words indistinguishable and unnecessary, soothing. Some kind of chill on her skin, between her thighs, making her whine, before she heard a quiet laugh in her ear and settled back where she floated without needing solidity.

Scent of ginger and sweet honey. A hand splayed across her belly, thumb brushing between her breasts. A soft, off-tune humming in her ears.

Sally opened her eyes. Thin slices of light between dark fingers. Angelica’s kiss on the tip of her ear.

“Hello again, my girl.” 

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” Sally said, the words slurring together. 

Angelica laughed, thumb brushing over Sally’s temple. She closed her eyes again when Angelica’s hand left it, parting her lips and tilting her head back, neck resting against Angelica’s collarbone as the mug of tea was brought to her lips.

“Do you want to sleep?” Angelica asked, her fingers now tapping a nonsensical rhythm on Sally’s hip.

Sally made a sound both in acquiescence and denial, utterly incoherent. Angelica nosed her hair. Her other hand closed around Sally’s wrist, shifting her hand down to the sheet. Pressed it against the mattress below.

“There,” Angelica said, smile obvious in her voice. “Now you know that you’re not going to fall over.” 

Sally smiled. She folded her fingers between Angelica’s, gripping tight.

Her knees ached, just a little. The envelope and the file were still on the floor. But there was Angelica here, her body solid and bracketing Sally’s. 

She turned her head to rest her cheek against Angelica’s shoulder. Angelica moved their hands, shifting position until hers was resting over Sally’s heart and Sally’s thumb could feel her thrumming pulse.

It was enough. It wouldn’t be later, she knew. Later, she would have to scramble to find something to feed the fire within herself to keep the kiln burning. Later, she would have to cling tight onto some sort of coldness so she would not burn up and crack the broken pieces within herself further.

But now the blanket was being tucked up to her chin, and Angelica’s heat was a gentle line along her spine. 

Now, this was more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> ♥ you, darling. I hope you like this. If this isn’t what you wanted, please tell me and I’ll write another one for you.


End file.
